Your Worst Fears

Chapter 1: Run

"Did you hear that?" Nick asked, interrupting my thoughts.

"Yeah, it sounded like it came from one of those rooms down there," Erik replied, pointing down the hall.

I didn't hear anything, but I didn't admit it, not wanting them to know I wasn't paying attention. From here on out, I was gonna have to focus on the task at hand and gather preliminary data, in case we needed it later. I pulled my bag around and dug my own voice recorder out, hitting the record button and tagging the time of day and where we were. When I turned my K2 meter on, I was surprised it didn't light up, since I'd felt weird since we'd walked into this place.

I turned around to realize I was standing in the middle of one of the upstairs rooms alone. "Hey!" I yelled, hurrying out of the room to catch up with the guys. "Don't leave me by myself at this place."

"Sorry, we thought you were right behind us," Nick said, looking at Erik with an odd expression. "Didn't it sound like she was right behind us?" He nodded, looking from me to Nick. "That was strange. I could've sworn...." He let it go, not bringing it up again, but making sure we all stayed together.

We'd walked into a few rooms before Erik's Mel Meter came to life, buzzing loudly, which instantly gave me the chills. "I've got something here." He looked around, trying to find the source of the EMF hit. "I can't imagine what would cause this. It's measuring four milligauss. No... five. It keeps going up." We stood silently, waiting to see if something was about to happen, but nothing did. 

"What's it at now?" Nick asked.

"It's almost up to six. That's ridiculous," Erik said.

I held my recorder out in front of me. "Is there someone here with us?" It felt weird asking that in the daytime, since it was usually the middle of the night when activity started. 

"Make yourself known." No sooner Nick got those three words out, the door slammed shut behind us, causing me to drop my K2. 

"Shit!" Erik yelled, even though it barely came out above a whisper.

It was at times like this when I would normally run, yet there was nowhere to run, since the door was what I wanted to run from, yet had to go through it to get away. "What do you think caused that?" I asked, hoping someone would explain it away.

"Could've been a draft or something, since the windows are broken," Nick said as he walked towards the door, obviously not as disturbed by it as I was. "Let's see if it'll do it again, maybe if a gust blows through."

"Man, I did't feel any wind come through," Erik mentioned.

"Me, neither," I sadly agreed. As much as I wanted activity to happen, I wanted it to happen from a distance, not right here in the same room.

"It doesn't take much of a gust to close a door; just enough to cause suction." 

He opened the door, using one finger to try to get it to swing closed again, but it didn't. We stayed in that room for ten more minutes with no more activity from the wind, our meters, or the door, so we moved on, making a note to come back to this room later. I followed Erik and Nick out while Nick told us about some of the history of the sanatorium as we walked down the shadowed hallway.

"Eleanor Cosgrove," he said, his voice echoing through rooms. "She was a patient here in the mid-forties, admitted for schizophrenia. As with many of the patients back then, lobotomies were rather common, and Eleanor ended up getting one. However, hers didn't go so well." A noise behind us caused us to stop and turn around. "Did you hear that?" We both nodded, Erik pointing down the hall where we'd just come from. "It sounded like knocking."